In video conferencing solutions, an individual can be assigned a personal static video bridge identification (ID) which can be used at any time to set up a “rendezvous,” “ad hoc,” or “static” video conference or “meeting.” Such video meetings often involve participants at a number of separate locations such that video source streams must be routed between participant endpoints over a wide area network (WAN) connecting the sites of the participants. A Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) located at one of the sites provides a media server resource for facilitating the communication between the multiple endpoints at the various sites, thereby enabling group video conferencing and collaboration.
To set up a video meeting, an initiator can provide his/her personal static bridge ID to the invitees of the meeting, e.g., by sending an invitation that includes the personal static video bridge ID and the date and time of day of the meeting. Personal static bridge IDs are typically permanently mapped to one MCU resource in the network. Thus, all video meetings initiated by an individual with his/her personal static bridge ID will use the same MCU to host meetings regardless of the source location of video users invited to or participating in the meetings. With static (rendezvous or ad hoc) video meetings, the locations of the participant users are not known in advance, and the endpoints for the video source streams are established on the fly as participants join the meeting. Depending on the locations of the participants of a particular video meeting, the location of the MCU associated with the personal static bridge ID used for the video meeting may cause an unnecessarily high number of video source streams to be routed across the WAN, resulting in an inefficient use of network resources. This problem is exacerbated when numerous individuals are assigned their own personal static bridge IDs and video bridges are frequently deployed in multiple regions of the network, producing heavy traffic across one or more WANs that connect those regions to each other. With widespread video conferencing, this scenario may result in inefficient WAN usage caused by insufficient available bandwidth, increased video latency, packet loss, and jitter.